An interconnect chipset permitting server vendors to design up to 32-way Opteron systems will be available later this year, said Newisys Inc. Instead, the “Horus” chip was designed to allow a glueless 8-way system using AMD’s Opteron chip. The number of processors could also be increased if multiple cores are used. Horus chip has taped out, will sample later this year, and will ship to systems partners in early 2005. Horus would serve as a controller maintaining connections between the processors using the Opteron’s HyperTransport links. Using coherent external HT links, the scalability can be bumped up to 32 processors. The Horus chipset also includes two redundant system management processors for powering on the server and other functions. Powering on and off the server by sending power-management commands flowing through the system is not trivial An interconnect chipset permitting server vendors to design up to 32-way Opteron systems will be available later this year, said Newisys Inc. Instead, the “Horus” chip was designed to allow a glueless 8-way system using AMD’s Opteron chip. The number of processors could also be increased if multiple cores are used. Horus chip has taped out, will sample later this year, and will ship to systems partners in early 2005. Horus would serve as a controller maintaining connections between the processors using the Opteron’s HyperTransport links. Using coherent external HT links, the scalability can be bumped up to 32 processors. The Horus chipset also includes two redundant system management processors for powering on the server and other functions. Powering on and off the server by sending power-management commands flowing through the system is not trivial